Welcome,
Global power consumption is approximately 14 terawatts (TW) and rising rapidly, as more and more countries improve their quality of life. Eighty percent of this power is generated by burning fossil fuels, and that sends nearly seven billion tons of carbon into our atmosphere every year in the form of greenhouse gasses. This is having a major impact on our environment, our economy, and our quality of life.
Nuclear power is an alternative, but a 1 gigawatt plant would have to be built every day for the next 40 years just to meet current demand. Developing renewable energy sources is important, but expanding generation alone is not sufficient, since many of these renewable sources are limited: global extractable wind energy, for example, is estimated to be around 3 TW, and the global hydroelectric extractable power is around 0.5 TW.
Here at UC Santa Barbara, our focus is on reducing demand, because the cleanest power plant is the one you don’t build. The Institute for Energy Efficiency is developing key technologies to make our use of energy more efficient. These technologies will be able to drive economic growth without increasing energy consumption. Improvements in energy efficiency can have a far bigger economic and environmental impact, realized far sooner, than the development of alternative energy sources. Our research is directed toward lighting, computing, communication, transportation, buildings and solar power. As our new technologies are implemented worldwide, the quality of life will continue to improve—but not at the expense of the environment. Please read on and find out more about our vision and mission, and about the work we’re doing to make that vision a reality. I hope you’ll join us in this effort.
John Bowers
Director, UCSB Institute for Energy Efficiency
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
